Multipurpose microcontroller design for PUGAS 2

This paper will report on the past year's work on the development of the microcontroller design for the second Purdue University small self-contained payload. A first report on this effort was given at last year's conference by Ritter (1985). At that time, the project was still at the conceptual stage. Now a specific design has been set, prototyping has begun, and layout of the two-sided circuit board using CAD-techniques is nearing completion. A redesign of the overall concept of the circuit board was done to take advantage of the facilities available to students. An additional controller has been added to take large quantities of data concerning the shuttle environment during takeoff. The importance of setting a design time-line is discussed along with the electrical design considerations given to the controllers

The effect of sodium and carbohydrate in a rehydration beverage when consumed as a meal on subsequent exercise performance

The purpose of this investigation was to assess whether a food (chicken noodle soup) consumed during the initial stages of recovery from exercise in the heat improves subsequent temperature regulation and exercise performance by improving fluid retention and restoring plasma volume close to euhydrated levels. Ten subjects were studied during 2 h of rehydration after a 2.7% body mass loss. In a randomized crossover design, subjects rehydrated with chicken noodle soup (Soup: 161.0 mmol/l Na+, 5.3 mmol/l K+) or sugar-free Kool AidRTM (14.4 mmol/l Na+, 1.6 mmol/l K+). Subjects ingested 175 ml at the start of rehydration and 20 min later; H2O was given every 20 min thereafter for a total volume equal to body mass loss during dehydration. At the end of the rehydration period, plasma volume and fluid balance were similar between treatments, although urine volume was greater in the Placebo trial (P = 0.06). Plasma osmolality (P \u3c 0.02) and plasma sodium (P \u3c 0.02) were significantly higher during rehydration in the Soup trial. After rehydration, subjects performed 30 min of steady state exercise (SSE) at 70% VO2peak followed by a time trial (TT) (30 min 70% VO2peak) with no further fluid intake. Neither beverage conferred cardiovascular or temperature regulation benefits during SSE. There was a trend for improved performance (P = 0.127) with soup ingestion (Soup 30.6 +/- 0.9 min; Placebo 32.2 +/- 1.5 min). Future research is needed to determine whether ad libitum rehydration during the rehydration period, SSE, and TT provides benefits in temperature regulation and exercise performance

Dissolvable microcarriers for efficient cell production and recovery

Cell scale-up on microcarriers is an increasingly important technique for bioprocess applications. However, the harvest, separation, and concentration of final product (e.g. cell, virus, or antibody) can be time and resource consuming. To address these issues, Corning has developed a new generation of microcarriers that can be quickly dissolved, allowing easy collection of grown cells or secreted products without the need for microcarrier separation. Here we present potential applications for dissolvable microcarriers. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs), MRC5, Vero, and customer-specific cell types were grown in spinner flask cultures or bioreactors on dissolvable microcarriers. For all cell types evaluated, growth performance on dissolvable microcarriers was equivalent to other commercially available microcarriers, and high quality cells were recovered without the need for microcarrier separation

THE EFFECT OF CONTRACTILE ACTIVITY AND SUBSTRATE CHALLENGES ON METABOLIC FLEXIBILITY IN HUMAN PRIMARY MYOTUBES

The skeletal muscle of severely obese individuals (BMI > 40 kg/m²) is characterized by a depressed ability to oxidize fatty acids and a failure to upregulate fatty acid oxidation (FAO) in response to increased lipid availability, both of which may contribute to a positive lipid balance and weight gain. The inability to switch from predominately glucose oxidation to FAO in the presence of a lipid challenge, such as a high-fat diet (HFD), is part of a defect in obesity known as metabolic inflexibility. In severe obesity, ten consecutive days of aerobic training (short-term training) partially restores metabolic flexibility by increasing the ability of skeletal muscle to oxidize fatty acids. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine a) whether contractile activity in human primary skeletal muscle cell culture (HSkMC) via electrical stimulation provides a model to investigate the mechanisms underlying the ability of short-term aerobic training to normalize FAO and provide some degree of metabolic flexibility in severely obese individuals and b) whether the metabolic inflexibility present in obesity is unique to a lipid challenge such as a HFD or whether obese individuals are also metabolically inflexible when challenged with carbohydrates (CHO) such as galactose or pyruvate. The hypotheses were that 1) HSkMC would provide a model to investigate how in vivo contractile activity increases FAO and markers of mitochondrial content in response to short-term aerobic training and 2) HSkMC from severely obese individuals would be metabolically flexible in response to galactose or pyruvate but would remain metabolically inflexible to a lipid challenge. The results contained herein suggest that contractile activity in HSkMC for 48 h may be capable of mimicking some of the short-term training effects such as increased FAO; however, a longer electrical stimulation period is warranted to initiate changes in mitochondrial content and oxidative capacity. Although comparisons between lean and obese were not made in this study, the results and recommendations of the present investigation have laid the groundwork for future studies to investigate the effect of electrical stimulation on HSkMC established from severely obese individuals. In the second study of this investigation, HSkMC established from severely obese individuals were found to be metabolically flexible in response to 24 h incubations with lipid, galactose, or pyruvate as evidenced by an increase in state 3 palmitoyl-carnitine malate (PCM₃) and FCCP stimulated respiration in response to all three substrates. Citrate synthase activity and OXPHOS protein content also increased whereas glucose utilization decreased in response to substrate challenges in both lean and obese groups. The volunteers in the second study were young and likely not far into the progression of metabolic disease, which may explain why metabolic flexibility remained intact in this population. Although limited by the inability to fully recapitulate true physiological conditions, human primary skeletal muscle culture is a novel tool for investigations into the mechanisms underlying metabolic inflexibility in obesity.Ph.D

Performance oriented cross-cultural management research: examining the impact of national culture on the practice-performance relationship

An extensive amount of research examines the relationship between management practices and performance (performance-oriented literature) as well as that between national culture and management practices (cross-cultural literature). However, few studies attempt to draw from each of these literatures by examining the influence of national culture on the practice-performance relationship. I develop a performance oriented cross-cultural framework and illustrate the potential of this framework by generating a number of hypotheses using three management practices: Transformational leadership, contingent compensation, and goal setting. I describe the methodological approach I use to test these hypotheses, including how data was collected from a large multinational corporation in the hospitality industry and a description of the sample and measures that were used. I then provide the results of the data analysis, and discuss the implications of these results

Herbaria Heritage: Visualising Colonial Bias in Natural History Collections

As a result of the colonial entanglements of many natural history collections,much of the world’s biodiversity heritage is housed in Europe. Increasingly, natural history institutions have started to address this history. However, computational methods for analysing large collections often consist in static visualisations of collection provenance. We argue that interactive visualisations allow users to understand collections better: their content gaps as well as interesting patterns and trends. Using a dataset containing metadata of five million entries from the botanical collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center, we created an interactive visualisation with Microsoft PowerBI. The visualisation depicts colonial origins and the botany collection’s movement to the Netherlands over time on an interactive map and timeline. This project thus addresses a gap in historical research on the colonial legacy of Dutch botanical collections, and also a gap in computer science research regarding computational techniques for distant reading of natural heritage data. Our interactive visualisation increases the accessibility of the available scientific data. It also contributes to understanding the cultural history of natural history collections and ultimately, highlights the importance of accurate and accessible visual representations of biodiversity collection histories. This project suggests a way forward for naturalhistory museums grappling with their colonial past

Operation of a high purity germanium crystal in liquid argon as a Compton suppressed radiation spectrometer

A high purity germanium crystal was operated in liquid argon as a Compton suppressed radiation spectrometer. Spectroscopic quality resolution of less than 1% of the full-width half maximum of full energy deposition peaks was demonstrated. The construction of the small apparatus used to obtain these results is reported. The design concept is to use the liquid argon bath to both cool the germanium crystal to operating temperatures and act as a scintillating veto. The scintillation light from the liquid argon can veto cosmic-rays, external primordial radiation, and gamma radiation that does not fully deposit within the germanium crystal. This technique was investigated for its potential impact on ultra-low background gamma-ray spectroscopy. This work is based on a concept initially developed for future germanium-based neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments.Comment: Paper presented at the SORMA XI Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, May 200

Estimating rainfall and water balance over the Okavango River Basin for hydrological applications

A historical database for use in rainfall-runoff modeling of the Okavango River Basin in Southwest Africa is presented. The work has relevance for similar data-sparse regions. The parameters of main concern are rainfall and catchment water balance which are key variables for subsequent studies of the hydrological impacts of development and climate change. Rainfall estimates are based on a combination of in-situ gauges and satellite sources. Rain gauge measurements are most extensive from 1955 to 1972, after which they are drastically reduced due to the Angolan civil war. The sensitivity of the rainfall fields to spatial interpolation techniques and the density of gauges was evaluated. Satellite based rainfall estimates for the basin are developed for the period from 1991 onwards, based on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) data sets. The consistency between the gauges and satellite estimates was considered. A methodology was developed to allow calibration of the rainfall-runoff hydrological model against rain gauge data from 1960-1972, with the prerequisite that the model should be driven by satellite derived rainfall products for the 1990s onwards. With the rain gauge data, addition of a single rainfall station (Longa) in regions where stations earlier were lacking was more important than the chosen interpolation method. Comparison of satellite and gauge rainfall outside the basin indicated that the satellite overestimates rainfall by 20%. A non-linear correction was derived used by fitting the rainfall frequency characteristics to those of the historical rainfall data. This satellite rainfall dataset was found satisfactory when using the Pitman rainfall-runoff model (Hughes et al., this issue). Intensive monitoring in the region is recommended to increase accuracy of the comprehensive satellite rainfall estimate calibration procedur